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Must be a Genius

Tired of looking for my genius to spring forth in any athletic endeavor, I decided to try my hand, excuse me, my brain at language.

I figured if my whole family was good at languages, I should be too.

That’s my mother, Professor of English language at a University. You’d think English would have been the language I would have learned first, but my mother refused to teach me. Go figure.

“Hi Carla? Do you know what happened to Marco? Yes! He cannot come to the park for a week.”

My sister went to an Italian school. She spoke Italian 24/7. You’d think I’d pick up some of what she was saying, but no.

“Do you know what happened to Marco? Yes! He cannot come to the park for a week.”

My dad even picked up a little Greek from my sister’s godfather. But not me.

I sat and stewed in my Russian.

I did sort of speak Georgian, but two languages did not count.

Lenin spoke five languages- why couldn’t I get at least three? I wouldn’t use them to cause a revolution, honest I wouldn’t.

My parents finally got me a tutor for Italian, so I could at least communicate with my own sister. Also my parents wanted me to translate, as she was quickly forgetting Russian and Georgian altogether and they needed someone who could translate letters from her school.

One day they got a letter from the Italian school, and it started like this.

“Genitori di…”

My parents looked at one another. My English professor mother scratched her head and asked my father “Why do they think we are janitors?” Remember, this was happening during a prehistoric time of no cell phones, no internet and no google translate. Desperate, they finally had to ask my tutor to translate. (Genitori di means ‘parents of’….)

I lasted for a month with my tutor. This was my achievement.

I was supposed to say “My sister bought a bottle.”

Guess what I ended up saying? Yeap. “My sister is a bottle.”

My tutor quit that day. She actually pretended she was moving to another country.

I would not have suspected anything if my French tutor had not come up with the same excuse few months later.

We moved to the US, and here I had to learn English. I knew some allready as my school in Moscow made it mandatory to speak at least one foreign language- KGB liked their possible recruits to blend in with foreigners. No, I never got to spy for any country. If you haven’t figure out by now why I was never considered a legitimate spy material, stop reading this blog.

Still with me?

Okay.

I have always regretted not having learned Italian. Therefore I was extremely pleased to see a mysteriously installed Rosetta Stone on my computer(it is legal, no need to call Rosetta Stone police).